That line, or a similar one, has been set to print a million times, and, indeed it was, at one time, accurate. That is not true today, and hasn’t, really, been true for many years. The city’s popularity has exploded, which is discussed at length in episodes nine and ten of the documentary series Catalunya Barcelona, and with increased population, regulations are passed to maintain a semblance of order. This is perfectly natural. Order, after all, is easy when everyone’s got elbow room. 

Licensing requirements were introduced, and the number of buskers in the city rapidly dwindled. The city’s most famous street, La Rambla, or Les Rambles, or Las Ramblas earned its tourism stripes by virtue of the galaxy of street performances taking place there. Yet, the street performers are gone for the most part, quarantined to a small block at the butt end of the pedestrian walk, replaced by pricey sidewalk cafés, and innocuous kiosks hawking gelato. 

This blog entry, in spite of the contents of the preceding paragraphs, is not a lament. True, I regret that friends who’d subsisted on street performance for years, long before I arrived, have now moved on, to other cities where they can perform with fewer restrictions. But this article is about the impending extinction of this breed of artist, not its forced migration. 

We are moving rapidly to a cashless world. In Barcelona, five years ago, when hailing a cab, you were foolish not to ask, “Puedo pagar con Visa?” if you only had plastic in your pocket. Today, every cab is required to have a credit card reader. And, indeed, the number of restaurants and shops only taking cash, or as it’s called here, “efectivo,” has gone from a majority to a curiosity.  

Unless you’re in Germany or Austria, one can go weeks without handling paper money. This is the reason I assert that the busker is going the way of the whooping crane. 

I stumble upon street performances—most, technically, clandestine— all the time. Some are quite impressive, more than worthy of an entertainment dollar or two, but most of the time I’m carrying no dollars at all. The busker, at the conclusion of his performance goes from table to table with a hat, but I’m usually stuck saying, “Lo siento. No tengo efectivo.” For their trouble, all I can pay is an apology. 

This problem is only going to get worse. Devices like Square, which imbue small businesses and independent contractors with the ability to process credit card transactions are not going to help. Fear of credit card fraud, identity theft have been burnt into the psyches of so many, the notion of sliding an American Express card through a street musician’s card reader seems a risk few would be willing to take. 

And so, soon enough, buskers will live on, only in pictures and memory, flanked by other extinct exotics like the West African Black Rhino, the Passenger Pigeon and the Tasmanian Tiger. 

But getting back to 2014’s importance: 20+ years after the Olympics, it was the year rent controls was finally lifted. This put the quaint, locally-owned storefronts–grocery stores, fruit stands, cafés–at a crossroads. Pony up or move on. On the one hand, they’d known decades in advance that the date was coming. On the other, if your economic engine is a fruit stand on Rambla de Catalunya or Carrer d’Enric Granados–two of Spain’s most expensive streets–eking out a margin is a stretch, even with decades to prepare.

Five years on, these streets have changed dramatically. New storefronts come and go on Rambla de Catalunya and Carrer d’Enric Granados with relative frequency. European and international holding companies have leased the storefronts, and the mom and pop shops have been replaced by franchises. They all have a sameness to them, a transient strip mall ethos, and, indeed, since they’re stores that snap together, they can be swapped out quickly.

There are more McDonalds, more Taco Bells, more Starbucks. It’s impossible to say this doesn’t diminish the charm of these streets. A Starbucks is not charming. A Starbucks is predictable. A Starbucks is a Starbucks.

Starbucks is a useful example, even if one’s loathe to use it as such–if only because doing so has become a cliche. It’s useful because Starbucks did not fill a void. There has never been a shortage of great coffee in Barcelona. Still, the number of Starbucks in Barcelona continues to increase. Now there are 20, with two on the short Rambla de Catalunya promenade.

Yet, like it or not, this is the natural order of things. A city grows more popular. Property values increase. Rents increase. More residents, more visitors, and more businesses vying to sell goods and services to those residents and visitors.

But getting back to 2014, Attorney Meritxell Campmany, during her interview with the Catalunya Barcelona film team, explained why 2014 is so notable in this regard.

And though we may not like it, though demand tends to make cities, at once more expensive, more overcrowded, and, simultaneously, more boring, it’s hard to do anything to stop it, because it’s difficult to identify a villain. Salaries in Spain are low. Many of the people, the property owners, whose buildings are being gobbled up and spun off as commercial entities are far from wealthy. Often, it’s a building that’s been in the family for generations, and owing to location, its value has taken a quantum leap.

And who can blame them for selling, or agreeing to jack up the rent, disrupting tenants’ lives, and forcing mom and pop storefronts to shutter their doors?

When someone offers you a sum–often a life-changing sum–that will improve the welfare of your entire family, it’s hard to say, “No,” and drawing on the better angels of our nature, forgoing such an offer to “preserve the neighborhood’s authenticity” takes an iron will and a martyr’s piety.